Mr. Porter was a stout man of about sixty, who was sometimes rather like Mr. Pickwick in appearance, but generally bore a greater resemblance to Tweedledum. He was dressed in a well-cut suit of pepper-and-salt check and wore a glossy collar with a full black cravat, in which a fine diamond twinkled modestly; a clear, somewhat florid face with that priestly glimmer of a very close shave, well-brushed boots, white spats, and a positive impression of having clean cuffs completed a figure that exhaled all the more prosperity and cheerfulness because the background of the hotel was so unsuitable. "Going to introduce myself. Ha-ha! Apsley Porter's my name. Well known hereabouts. Ha-ha! Didn't expect to meet a compatriot in these times at Avereshti. Ugly little hole. Business before pleasure, though, by George! I don't see why pleasure should be left out in the cold altogether. What are you going to have? Ordered a Martini here the other day. 'What's that?' I said to the scoundrel who served it. 'Martini? Pah! Almost as dangerous as a Martini-Henry,' I said. Ha-ha-ha-ha! But of course the blackguard didn't understand me. Going to have dinner with me, I hope. I've ordered a few special dishes. Always bring my own champagne with me in case of accidents. I forced them to get ice here, though. Ha-ha! By George, I did. I said that if there wasn't ice whenever I came I should close down one of the principal wells I control. Did I tell you my name? Ah, glad I did. I've got a deuced bad habit of talking away without introducing myself. Here comes the villain with your cocktail. You must gin and bear it. What? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" Sylvia liked Mr. Porter and accepted his invitation to dinner. He was distressed to hear that a friend had been staying with her in the hotel so recently as this morning and that he had had the bad luck to miss entertaining her. "What, another little Englishwoman in Avereshti? By George! what a pity I didn't turn up yesterday! I sha'n't forgive myself. Come along, waiter. Hurry up with that champagne. Fancy! Another jolly little Englishwoman and I missed her. Too bad!" There was irony in meeting upon the vigil of her return to England this Englishman redolent of the Monico. Sylvia had spent so much of her time intimately with people at the other pole of pleasure that she had forgotten how to talk to this type and could only respond with monosyllables to his boisterous assaults upon the present. He was so much like a fine afternoon in London that she sunned herself, as it were, in his effluence, and let her senses occupy themselves with the noise of the traffic, as if she had suddenly been transplanted to the Strand and was finding the experience immediately on top of Avereshti pleasant, but rather bewildering. And now he was talking about the war.